Tissue Dissection Application:

We used TECA’s AHP-1200CAS three stage cascaded thermoelectric cold plate system to facilitate dissection of frozen human postmortem brain slices for extraction of protein for Proteomics research. Because we were trying to select specific regions without damaging the rest of each small specimen, it was important for us to maintain the integrity of the specimen during dissection.

Working in a lab at normal room temperature, we found that a constant temperature of -18 °C was ideal for this work (-20 °C was too cold, and warmer than -18 °C made the tissue start to melt). It would have been impossible to maintain such a precise temperature outside of a Cryostat without the cold table. It was immensely easier to perform the dissection on the cold table, and of course also much easier to wipe down the cold table than to clean a Cryostat.